Success!

Hi There!

So I wanted to put my IKEA adapter to the task of powering the Arduino. But this kind of failed as apparently it only provides 4,8V Which is of course not enough. But fear not Luck was on my side as I found out that the adapter from my Harddrive is exactly right for the Arduino.

So I tested my prototype! And it worked! :D The first day I tried it it started to turn around 7:45 and was still turning when I left around 8. And in the afternoon about 17:00 I got a call from a roommate that it was turning! So, if it stopped turning in between, it did work! But my roommate also asked if he should stop it as one of the gears pushed itself out and now it was just making a lot of noise. So he pulled the plug and the experiment stopped.

So this was the end of this.

I found out that in the code I ask it to run on 20% of all the light that it receives. So if it maps out all the received light it starts turning on the bottom 10 % and stop at the bottom 30%.

This makes it turn for a very long time (at least longer than 15 minutes) which is longer than I envisioned it working. So now I changed the code so it will only run on 5%, and we'll see how that goes.

So this is what I'm going to test this week. And then I'll stop with this experiment And wait for summer since I don't notice it turning when I'm home, Since I leave before it the sun is really up and back after the sun is down. Maybe this is more a summer experiment.

This week I will think of things to do with the speaker and see if I can make it react to different types of sensors. or maybe use it as a sensor. :)

Yeah not to brilliant yet, but hopefully it will be interesting :).

ah well cheers!

frank

Troubles in traveling lands...

Hi...

Sorry that it took me TWO weeks to get back, but in these two weeks I started my internship in Amsterdam and I lost more time than I expected to lose, and the nights have been busier than they have been the last couple of weeks. So no time for other things, But (luckily) there is still some news.

First the prototype:

This is the prototype as I wanted to test it (you see that I wanted and apparently couldn't write 'did'?). So this is the prototype that should work when the sun goes down or up and make some nice sounds.

So first thing that I added is a 9V battery so it wouldn't need to be connected to my (awesome) laptop, since I would need it during the week. The black little box on the right is the Relay that turns the engine on.

Here is the Light sensor, which senses the light and then passes it's value on to the Arduino. (Don't worry about all the wires, they are supposed to be there and strangely enough I know what they all should do! (Actually it isn't that difficult! :) ))

And this is the motor with a small stick attached to it. Can you see the added paper? Remember that I wanted it to sound like grass reacting on the wind? It doesn't... The engine and gears make waaaaay to much sound and the paper sounds way to sharp... but anyway it works :) it makes a sound.... later improvements can be made.

"So," you might ask "You've been at it for about two weeks. What are the results?" he... uhm... something went wrong... I was fearing it but let me show you a picture of the evil doer (not really of course, I did it wrong but i'm not willing to admit it publicly. ):

The damn battery run out of power!!!!!!!!!!! even before it got dark! so... i couldn't even test the damn prototype! .....aaaaah.... welll..... lets look around will we?

I found out that my IKEA SPoka light uses a 12V transformer that uses the right plug. Only the poles are switched around so I think i will cut the wires and switch them :) And see if it will work :). So hopefully next weeek will be waaaay better :) and hopefully successful :).

In other news: My headphones died. Yes it is a very sad happening that makes you gulp... I know... it's hard. The thing what happened was that one of the cables broke. And with my new found experience in soldering things I decided I could fix it. And strangely enough I did... But after some time the left ear (the one I fixed) started to lose some volume and I though "Well that's probably my bad soldering! :D" happy as I was, as I new I just needed to re-solder it again, I opened it up and soldered it again. Listened, heard that it was still wrong and soldered it again, and still it was wrong. So maybe there was something wrong... I tried to also solder the other speaker (You never know right?) and still nothing changed. So I switched the wires of the speakers so the left speaker became the right speaker and the other way around, And still the same speaker performed badly. So I think it is broken.

But! As I remembered reading at the Sparkfun page the Piezo speaker (the one normally in the Arduino Starter kit) is a 30 Ohm speaker.... And these speakers are 32 Ohm! So, in the future, expect some experiments with sounds :D!!!

As a closing feature I also want to show a picture of my new babies! I bought a Mint plant from IKEA and they started to grow!!!!

Ah.... look at the tiny leaves..... :D their soo cute :D ...maybe a new (g)arduino experiment??

so, good afternoon and see you next week. Hopefully with a report about the prototype :)

cheers!

frank

First prototype almost finished!!!

Woohooo!

I've seen the first magic!!! and it was... well magicall.. actually it wasn't that magical but it was cool to see :). ....

Does it make sense? no it doesn't, or at least I don't.... Damn Coffee, (Coffee is gooood) but I had to much of it....

Anyway (I seem to use this word to much lets use something else) However, I promised to show some drawings that I made:

This is a black and white drawing of a Camera (I hoped you already got that :) ) It is a copy ofa picture which i placed on the black paper using chalk and then filled in with white chalk and pencil.

This is a front and top view of a Philips tape player (How do you call these things?) and this is the drawing that took like 20 hours to complete, but I like it. I like the detail on it and the way the crayons and marker came out.

Enough with the drawings!!! and on with the prototyping (although drawing is fun to do two :) ). Remember the set up I made last week? yes? (If not check the last post) well, I found out it will not work, the motor needs way too much power to get started so it actually asked to much of my USB port forcing to shut down my beloved laptop in a rather unloving way. Luckily my laptop is fine, and I seem to be recovering from the shock as well. :)

So it was time for a new plan. I got the motor from an old CD-rom, and I still had all the other components which also included some nice gears :). after experimenting a bit I found that the easiest way to use these was just to add a stick to it that can hit into things, like bells or hollow tubes tubes. But maybe I will add some paper things, so I will sound like the rustling of the wind through a grass field :). Very relaxing :).

After trying out a couple of ways to let the motor run on 3 V I found out that the easiest way is a relay, Which I use now in this set up. Though somehow I wouldn't run on a normal digital 1, which should be a constant 5V, So maybe I'll get into that because it would be nice if I wouldn't need to use a Relay, and could just use the Arduino.

So here is the prototype:

Next I want to buy a 9V battery so I can try it out for about a week to see how well it works.

see you next week!

ciao!

frank